Professor Marco Antonio Meggiolaro, of the Pontifical
Catholic University of Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, has translated his
popular book — the RioBotz
Combot Tutorial — into English.
In May’s Combat Zone, SERVO
summarized the “LaunchBot”
portion of his exhaustive chapter
on weapons. Chapter 6 —
Weapon Design — is a college
level textbook on the design and
operational theory of today’s
combat weapon systems. In this
article, we present a much
simplified version of the
HammerBots section of this
chapter. Marco’s book is
available free for download at
www.riobotz.com.br/en/
tutorial.html, and for hard
copy purchase (at no profit to
Marco) on Amazon, published
by CreateSpace. All information
here is provided courtesy of
Professor Meggiolaro and
RioBotz.

HammerBot Design

Hammers usually need to be
pneumatically powered to be
effective. This is because they
have to reach their maximum
speed in only 180 degrees of
rotation. Since most pneumatic
actuators are linear cylinders,
you’ll need some type of
transmission to convert linear into
rotary motion. This can be done